Monthly Archives: December 2008

Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring. Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.

Crash Davis

Of course Greg Maddux is retiring tenth on the all-time strikeout list (3371). Still, when I think back on Maddux in twenty, thirty years from now, my guess is what I’ll remember the most about him is a dinky ground ball to second base. That was the signature out of his prime, a crappy grounder, a squibber that rolled harmlessly to a waiting infielder. Or maybe a little jam shot pop-fly.  Or yeah, even a strikeout, the late-breaking fastball tailing back over the plate leaving hitters with their asses out, hands up and bats still on their shoulder.

In his prime, you rarely saw good swings or heard solid contact against Maddux.

There will be a host of tributes to Maddux this week. Here are the early birds.

Joe Posnanski:

I never presumed to think with Maddux or have a deeper understanding of why he was so good. I just loved watching him pitch, loved the whole scene, loved seeing the frustration batters would show, loved the way umpires over the course of a game became willing co-coconspirators, loved the way catchers would just let the ball tumble into the glove without moving, loved the way Maddux would fidget when he didn’t have all of his stuff working, loved it all. He was Mozart, I was Salieri, and no I couldn’t reproduce it, no I couldn’t get close to it, but I felt like I could hear the music.

Over at SI.com, Tom Verducci writes:

The magic show is over. I dislike absolutes, but of this I am sure: Greg Maddux is the most fascinating interview, the smartest baseball player and the most highly formed baseball player I have encountered in 27 years covering major league baseball. There is no one alive who ever practiced the craft of pitching better than Maddux.

…I will miss watching him pitch. In his prime, Maddux never received enough credit for the quality of his stuff. Too many people equate power with stuff, but Maddux’s fastball, at least back when he was throwing 90 mph, had ridiculous movement — late, large movement. Think about this: he dominated hitters with no splitter and a curveball that was no better than high-school quality.

That’s how good were his fastball and changeup. It wasn’t just location.

Here is Verducci’s 1995 feature profile on Maddux for SI.

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Once upon a time the winter meetings mainly consisted of boozy old general managers getting boozy and doing business.  Today, it is one of the biggest events of the baseball year, and certainly the highlight of the off-season.  It is covered breathlessly on-line and on TV.  It’s where fantasy teams are born.  It’s about rumors and gossip and Did You Hear? and I Gotta-Scoop. 

I went to the 2003 winter meetings in New Orleans after my first year blogging and introduced myself around to guys like Tom Verducci and Jack Curry, Howard Bryant and Tim Marchman, Nate Silver and Joe Sheehan.  Jay Jaffe and I went down together.  Will Carroll, who had been to the ’02 meetings urged us to come.  It’s the perfect place for a guy like Will who loves the adrenaline of the scoop world, of being on the inside, or at least being close to people on the inside.

I had a good time and met a bunch of great guys but I haven’t been back and wouldn’t want to go to another winter meetings unless I was getting paid for it.  For a writer, it is a lot of hard work.

From what I could tell in my one brief encounter, being at the meetings means a lot of standing around.  It has all the trappings of a seventh-grade dance, everybody anxious, waiting for something to go down.  But instead of the girls being the objects of desire for the groups of men, general managers like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein, personalities like Peter Gammons and Buster Olney, are the ones that everyone is gawking at, pretending that they are not being obvious. 

The hotel lobby is filled with columnists and beat writers (Internet writers and bloggiers now too), agents and their assistants, general managers and their assistants, a few managers, a stray former player possibly looking for a coaching job, smart college kids looking for front office work. 

It is a heavily cologned scene.  Too bad Hunter Thompson isn’t still around.

The Hot Stove has been ice cold this year unless you consider the Giants signing Edgar Renteria or the Cardinals trading for Khalil Greene hot transactions.  This year the meetings are in Vegas, which you would hope will enough by itself to instigate some action.  Vegas is either the best place in the world to holding the winter meetings or the worst (or maybe it’s just a little bit of both, depending on your luck).

Even if nothing much happens, being in Vegas at least gives caption writers and columnists plenty to work with.  We’ll see variations on a theme—Viva Las Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas, Ocean’s Eleven, The Rat Pack, Snake Eyes, Flush, Full House, Stip Poker, you name it.  Yes, the writers should have a field day.

We’ll have our ears to the ground, breathlessly following the breathless action, hoping above all else, that somebody gives us something to be breathless about.

What, if anything, do you think will change in the Yankee Universe in Vegas?

With memories of my father, who passed away on this day 14 years ago … this update is for you dad:

• Bryan Hoch of MLB.com has a rundown of the top starting pitchers to be had,  including for each the teams interested, latest chatter, reasons they haven’t been signed yet, and chances of them being signed during the Meetings.
• George King of the Post offers a preview of the Yanks plans for the Winter Meetings.
• Over at the Times, Dan Rosenheck writes of the differing qualities of a save, and how K-Rod’s gaudy 62 save season was actually less impressive than Mariano Rivera’s:

A far better way to measure a reliever’s value is a statistic called Win Probability Added, which compares a team’s chances of winning a game before a pitcher takes the mound to the same figure once he departs. So the closer who protects the three-run lead in the ninth is credited with only 0.035 wins — the difference between the 96.5 percent likelihood of victory when he entered and the 100 percent when he left — while the setup man keeping a game tied in the eighth gets 0.113 wins, for increasing his team’s odds of victory from 36.5 percent to 47.8 percent.

Rodríguez’s 3.33 W.P.A. was only the fourth best among American League closers last year, trailing Mariano Rivera, Joakim Soria and Bobby Jenks. Many of his official saves were insignificant; on Aug. 12, he received one for recording a single out with a four-run lead and two runners on. And some of his blown saves were excruciating, like the walk, single and game-winning homer he surrendered to blow a two-run cushion on July 9.

• John Perrotto of BP.com offers a team-by-team preview for the Winter Meetings.  The Yankee section is pretty much as we expect it.
• Pete Toms at the Biz of Baseball surveys the changing landscape of televised coverage of baseball, especially in light of the launching of the MLB Network on New Year’s Day.  Here’s a reference to the thinking of teams like the Yanks that have their own RSN (Regional Sports Network):

Clubs also see themselves as better able to grow their brands locally when they control the local TV content.   Sports consultant Marc Ganis said of the Yankees’ RSN,  “YES has not only been a financial success, but also a critical success creating programming and implementing sponsorships that bring fans closer to their favorite team and players that likely never would have been done with a non-team-affiliated broadcaster,”

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Is it me, or has the three-week time frame since the Yankees extended the six-year, $140 million offer to CC Sabathia represented a Dead Zone? John Harper noted as much in today’s Daily News.

Perhaps the greatest hitch in the lack of offseason movement so far, as many local scribes have hinted, is Scott Boras, who not only represents Sabathia, but the three other major names in whom the Yankees are reportedly interested: Mark Teixeira, A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe. Maybe it’s also because the local headlines have reflected a fascination with the Plaxico Burress PR disaster and the BCS College Football mess.

As we all know, New York, despite its fervor for the Giants, Jets, Rangers and the Knicks, is a baseball town. Keeping up with everything at this time of year is no small feat. I applaud our Diane Firstman for linking the hell out of the coverage, which can get messy.

Every year, I try to observe which reporter has the goods on the story — or stories — and gets the jump on his competition. Here’s how you know: When a reporter from a competing newspaper — and yes, they all read each other — credits you by name in a column, you’re on point.

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Jose Calero believes in gods.

He figures the gods are against him if the elevators aren’t working when he delivers pizzas to one of the tall apartment buildings. If he has to climb above the fifth floor he becomes convinced that the gods hate him.

“They always show their feelings,” Calero explained. “If things go bad then I try and do good and make the gods happy. Things are always better when the gods are on your side.”

Calero doesn’t believe in a specific god.

“I believe in all gods,” he said. “There are different gods for different things: Elevator gods and money gods, too. Once I was out of cash and wasn’t even going to be able to buy groceries, but I found $20 on the ground. The gods were looking out for me.”

The gods gave him a landlord who lets the rent slide sometimes and friends who look out for him.

“I’ve got it pretty good,” Calero admitted. “I just need the gods for the little things like elevators and money and baseball.”

Calero paused and dug around in his pocket. He pulled out a coin and flipped it in the air.

“I bought a newspaper this morning and got this back as change,” he said. “I thought it was a quarter at first, but it’s a coin from Panama.

“That’s a sign from the gods,” Calero continued. “Mariano is from Panama and next year is sure to be his best ever.”

Someone pointed out that every year is Mariano Rivera’s best ever.

“But this will be even better,” Calero insisted. “He will save the final game of the World Series and lead the parade downtown.”

Calero smiled.

“There is no stopping us now. The baseball gods are on our side.”

  They don’t make ballplayers like Joe Pepitone anymore. I’ll leave that up to you, the reader, to decide whether that is something good or bad for our great game.

By the time that Topps issued this card as part of its 1968 set, Pepitone had established himself as arguably the most colorful character in the history of the Yankee franchise. That was certainly a tall task of grand proportions, given the precedence of former oddball Yankees like Frank “Ping” Bodie, Lefty Gomez, and manager Casey Stengel.

Considered a can’t miss-prospect who was fully capable of playing all three outfield positions and first base, Pepitone first reached the major leagues in 1962, joining a Yankees team that featured a conservative front office and a staid approach to playing the game. Pepitone’s flamboyance ran counter to the Yankee way. Incredibly vain, he arrived at spring training flashing a new Ford Thunderbird, bragging about his new boat, and wearing a new sharkskin suit. When the young star didn’t hustle during the regular season, he was greeted with angry catcalls from his veteran teammates, reminding him not to “mess with their money.” They were referring to their almost annual World Series shares, which they felt would become threatened if Pepitone’s lack of hustle continued.

Off the field, Pepitone’s love of the fast lane reflected the lifestyle preferences of established Yankees like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. Yet, there was something different about Pepitone’s way, which was less discreet, less subtle, and far more palpable. In perhaps his most blatant indiscretion, Pepitone occasionally didn’t show up for games, leading to speculation that he was being pursued by bookies for unpaid gambling debts.

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You can read it in the Sunday Papers … but start here:

• Tyler Kepner of the Times has an article on the arrival of Scott Boras at the Winter Meetings.  Here’s an excerpt:

Boras’s guiding principle is that it takes only one team to set the market, and he offered a hint of that theory when asked his opinion about the effects of the overall economy on baseball. “I think there are 30 economies in baseball,” Boras said, referring to the 30 major league teams, and adding later: “We know baseball had record revenues, and the profits that are in the barn for many owners are extraordinary. There are clubs that run their business appropriately, and we all know it’s good business to have good players.”

• Bill Madden previews the Yanks and Mets tasks at the Winter Meetings.  He includes a decidely different opinion on the issue of arbitration vis-a-vis Pettitte and Abreu:

As of yesterday, only eight of the 171 free agents had signed, and while the slow market figures to pick up somewhat in Vegas, other than the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and, to a lesser degree, the Braves, the depressed economy appears to have most teams  disinclined to enter into expensive long-term contracts.

That is why Cashman wisely chose not to offer arbitration to Abreu or Jason Giambi, neither of whom is likely to get more in multi-year offers than they were making in one year with the Yankees.

• The News’s Anthony McCarron has the latest on Brian Cashman’s pursuit of C.C. Sabathia.
• SI’s Jon Heyman may have some unpleasant news for Cashman …. Sabathia is anticipating the Brewers upping their initial offer:

Brewers general manager Doug Melvin reportedly will meet with Sabathia’s agent Greg Genske at the winter meetings, and while reports have indicated that the confab will provide Melvin a chance to gauge Sabathia’s interest, more importantly, it is believed that the Brewers will either at that meeting or soon after signal a willingness to enhance their initial bid.

• McCarron also catches up with former Yankee star Ed Figueroa, who now owns two restaurants in Puerto Rico.
• The Post’s Kevin Kernan details the work Ian Kennedy has been doing this off-season to correct the flaws apparent in his 2008 performance:

The former USC star went home and worked with pitching guru Tom House, who has been the Trojans’ pitching coach the past two years.

“I got some tips and started applying those and it made the break of my curveball better and the command of it extremely better,” Kennedy said from Puerto Rico. “Now I know what I have to do. Before I was just throwing it to throw it and try to throw it for a strike and not have any idea.”

Essentially, Kennedy is holding onto the baseball longer, and that makes a difference in break and command. As a result, he can make in-game adjustments to get the results he needs.

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The guys gathered around Juan Carlos’s coffee cart watched a desperate move on the Grand Concourse this morning.

A woman trying to catch a bus bolted across four lanes of traffic. She sidestepped a delivery van and just missed being clipped by a garbage truck before reaching the other side through a wave of screeching tires and screaming horns.

The guys shook their heads.

“She might be nuts,” someone said, “but she’s got guts.”

“Maybe she’s late for work,” someone else offered.

“I can’t imagine any job being that important,” another said.

“Are you kidding?” someone snapped. “A job is all that stands between any of us and living on the streets. Lose your job, lose your home, lose your life. I would take a chance like that if I was late and the boss might fire me. Any of us would.”

They all nodded.

“I guess keeping your job is worth just about anything these days,” someone else said. “You just have to calculate the risk and give yourself the best chance to make it.”

“So it’s kinda like stealing a base?” another asked.

“Not exactly,” someone said. “It’s like stealing home.”

Powered by A Bit of Fry and Laurie (hat tip to Jon Weisman for the link), here’s the news:

• At BP.com, Jay Jaffe puts on his GM’s hat and tries to fix the Yankees.  Here’s some highlights:

Withdraw the offer to Sabathia, which has been on the table since November 14.
Sign Teixeira.
Swisher becomes the primary right fielder, in a platoon with Nady.
Short-term CF solution by swapping Hideki Matsui to the Giants for Randy Winn.
Wang and Chamberlain are rotation locks, Hughes or Kennedy will take the number five spot. Alfredo Aceves is my seventh starter behind whichever of those two is sixth, and that at least one spare is stretched out at Scranton. That leaves a need for two starters. For one spot, I sign Derek Lowe.  Having signed Lowe, I’ll go high-risk/high-reward for the other spot. I’m going to sign Ben Sheets to a two-year, $30 million deal with a vesting option for a third year.

• As you probably know by now, Brian Cashman has met with Scott Boras regarding Mark Teixeira, and will talk to C.C. Sabathia this weekend as per Tyler Kepner at the Times).
• Think you have the Yankees’ next moves figured out?  Here’s some info from Buster Olney at ESPN:

They want to sign Sabathia, and if they cannot do that, then they intend to take the millions that would’ve been spent on the left-hander and chase after Teixeira, while bidding on Lowe. The Yankees also have had internal discussions about second baseman Orlando Hudson, whom they would sign, presumably, if they were to move closer to the long-considered swap of Robinson Cano to the Dodgers (or some other team). If the Yankees were to trade Cano to L.A., they almost certainly would insist upon an elite pitcher like Clayton Kershaw or Chad Billingsley in return, and in failing to get that, they’d lock in on outfielder Matt Kemp.

• Over at the News, Mark Feinsand has this quote regarding the Yankees’ concern over someone making Sabathia a better offer:

“He’s got one suitor besides us, and that’s Milwaukee,” said one Yankees official who dismissed San Francisco as a legitimate contender. “He’ll have to make a decision: Does he want to leave a lot of money on the table?”

• Feinsand also echoes the Times Kepner on Cashman’s meeting with Boras, but has the focus on a different Boras client:

… to discuss the 36-year-old righthander (Lowe). Cashman was not reachable for comment, but it is believed that no offer was made, though that could come later this week or during next week’s winter meetings in Las Vegas.  Cashman is also believed to have discussed other Boras clients, including Oliver Perez and Mark Teixeira, but Lowe was the focus.

• Pick-3: Over at LoHud, Pete Abe offers his readers a poll to choose which of Lowe, Sheets and Burnett the Yanks should sign.   There is also a “none of the above” choice.  (Sheets is leading at time of this post). Pete also has an interesting post on a study done by Sports Management grad students at Manhattanville College.  Here’s an excerpt:

The students charted the win shares and durability of frontline players and bench players and broke them down to hitters, starters and relievers. They then compared all 30 teams.

As you might expect, starting pitching is what separated the elite teams from the rest and there was a wide disparity. That was particularly the case with the Yankees. But what struck me was that the offensive production was in a pretty tight range. The frontline players of most teams played close to the mean.  In other words, starting pitching is what mattered, particularly the depth of starting pitching. The students, who are all fans of the Yankees, commented that Brian Cashman was doing the right thing by focusing on starting pitching.

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There’s Reggie Jackson lovers and Reggie Jackson haters.  I don’t think he cares which way they go so long as they shout, ‘Reggie!'”

Billy Hunter”

What was it that Pasternak said?  ‘Once in every generation there’s a fool who tells the truth exactly as he sees it.’  That’s Reggie.”

Jim Palmer

 
Tony Kornheiser wrote a great newspaer profile on Reggie at the end of spring training in ’78 for the Times. Reggie drove his Rolls to an exhibition game, Kornheiser rode shotgun, and got Reggie in fine form.*

Here’s how the piece, which is maybe 2,300-500 words, ends:

Jackson’s Lonely World, a Year After His Season of Hurt

March 27, 1978

By Tony Kornheiser

The uniform is tight and tapered, and he is into it in 15 minutes, ready to go. But the ride and the conversation have drone his insides dirty. Too much past dredged up. He needs something to keep his stomach down.

“There’s the man,” calls Dave Nelson, the Royal infielder, coming over to Jackson. “Congratulations, congratulations on a helluva World Series. You deserve it.”

Behind Nelson comes John Mayberry, the Royal slugger.

“Reggie!” Mayberry shouts.

“Rope, what’s up?” Jackson says.

“You, man. You, with your bad self.”

It is curious, but he seems most comfortable with members of other teams. With the Yankees, he is at his most comfortable at the batting cage, before games, when the other team’s players are close. You sense that is searching for vocal respect that only opposing players are willing to give him. It seems likely that still even after his Ruthian World Series, some of his teammates are either too jealous or too stubborn to admit that they were wrong about his ability as a player.

In the clubhouse Jackson is hesitant. Even now there is tenseness between him and many other Yankees. Yet, it may well be that he infers more hostility than actually exists.

“In the locker room I don’t feel like I’m one of the guys,” he says. “It’s hard for me to say this. I’d like to fit in, but I don’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be allowed to fit in. I need to be appreciated, even praised. I like to hear: ‘Nice going. Great going. You’re a helluva ball player.’ But I walk in feeling disliked. Maybe I’m overdoing it. Like I never get on anybody in the clubhouse unless it’s a situation where it’s obvious that it’s OK for me to say something. I stay in the background. I never talk to too many people, except maybe Fran Healy or Ray, the clubhouse attendant, or the press.

“I never small-talk with anyone; I don’t feel that anyone cares to talk to me. So I kind of shut up. I’m always the one who has to initiate the conversations. Sometimes I hear my voice in the locker room, and I wasn’t to take it back. I don’t want anyone to look at me or feel uncomfortable around me.”

These words are hard to hear and harder, perhaps, to say.

And then there is a game to play. He is at peace playing baseball. He starts in right field and plays five innings going to bat three times. Two outs and one RBI single. The people, who react to him as they react to no other Yankee—loud boos, even louder cheers—are satisfied. He has been held down, but not out.

With permission to leave early, Jackson showers, dresses and goes to his car for the drive home. There is a crowd, as usual. He sings autographs and discusses the care, its paint job and the reason he likes to park in the shades instead of the sun. Before leaving he takes a towel and wipes it down, wiping even the inside carpeting, making sure it is perfectly clean.

Forty miles outside Fort Myers he is playing his tape deck, and the chorus of the song repeats, ‘We’re all in this together.” Jackson is singing along. “All my life,” he says, “I wanted a car like this. I know it’s a rich man’s car. I’m proud I can afford it.”

“He should be happy,” says Chris Chambliss. “He has everything he could want.”

“Are you happy?” Jackson is asked.

“For print?” he answers as the car moves almost silently past the swamps on Alligator Alley.

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By Glenn Stout

It was a nothing game.

September 24, 1992. A Thursday night. The Yankees in fourth place and the Tigers in sixth, neither of them close to the Blue Jays, or, apparently, with any chance of ever getting close to the Blue Jays or anyone else atop the division for at least a few more years. A young Scott Kamienicki vs. an aging Frank Tanana, one-time hard thrower whose fastball had come and gone and left behind a pile of guts and guile.

We were down from Boston, my girlfriend and I. She’d recently moved back in with me after getting a grad degree from Columbia and living and working in Mount Vernon for a few years, and we had some business to take care of in the city.

It had already been a funny day. Taking a bus somewhere downtown I’d seen Liza Minelli poking around outside some antique bathroom fixture store. Down by City Hall I’d used of one of those high tech public bathrooms that had cost 50 cents and gave itself a shower afterwards, like something from the Jetsons. Then I saw Rudy Giuliani walking down the street.

We went to the game – a nice early fall night. Only about 12,000 people were in the Stadium, so we had pretty good seats, probably the best seats I’d ever had for a major league game anywhere at that point – the main boxes, not too high up, almost dead on a line with the left field foul line. We might have paid twelve dollars a ticket, which also would have been the most I’d ever spent on a baseball ticket at the time.

I saw Nicolas Cage. He had better seats, right behind the plate, but still 20 or 30 rows up.

There wasn’t a whole lot of care on display on the field that night. Mattingly played hard, as always, and cracked a couple of doubles, and this new kid in center field, Bernie Williams, had a good night. But almost everyone else one either team – Charlie Hayes, Rob Deer, Tartabull – was packing it in; you could tell.

Seventh inning. Yankees ahead 4-0. Tanana throwing changeups off changeups and the occasional big sloppy curve – nothing much over eighty miles an hour. The crowd was already starting to file out.

Leading off, Gerald Williams. Rookie. I remember liking Gerald more than Bernie at first. He moved like a ballplayer, while Bernie moved like an antelope still wet from birth.

Gerald Williams hadn’t done much so far – a fly out, a strikeout. But now Tanana, thirty-nine years old and in his nineteenth year of major league baseball, gave him a pitch.

Williams didn’t miss it. I’ll never forget the trajectory – almost straight down the line, a little hook to it like a golf shot, that one bright spot against the black going smaller…

And Gerald Williams watching it, and walking, slow toward first before, barely, breaking into a trot. His first major league home run.

I was watching him saunter toward first when I heard someone yelling, not just to get someone’s attention, but REALLY yelling, I mean angry “I’m gonna ruin your face” kind of mad.

It was Frank Tanana. Pissed. Chewing Williams’ ass out every step he took all around the bases for standing there and showing him up. And Williams did speed up – not much – just enough to let Tanana know he heard but at the same time not so much to let him think he had been intimidated. And Tanana kept yelling.

Baseball-Reference tells me that Pat Kelly followed with a walk and Bernie Williams, this time running like an adult antelope, tripled, knocking out Tanana, and the Yankees went on to win 10-1, but to be honest, I don’t really remember much else about the game.

But I’ve got a great excuse. You see, when I was down by City Hall earlier that day, my girlfriend and I had applied for a wedding license. We went back the next day and got married in a ceremony that took precisely 27 seconds.

Or about as long as it took Gerald Williams to run around the bases.

Glenn Stout is the series editor of the Best American Sports Writing and the author of many books, including Yankee Century.

I caught the YES Hot Stove show last night.  The panel featured veteran newspaper men Hal Bodley, Murray Chass and Jack Curry.  It has become all too easy to call out Chass which is a shame because he was so good for so long.  So I won’t pile on but he really didn’t come off well.  He monopolized the conversation and what he said…oy.  Bodley was fine if somewhat bland and Curry was good as usual. 

And our pal Steve Goldman distinguished himself in an oddly-conceived segment as the “Interweb Expert.”

Dig:

I lean on Red Smith’s words like the counter at the Crown Diner and the bar at Ballpark Lanes and baseball all the time.

“Over the years people have asked, ‘Isn’t it dull covering baseball every day?’ My answer: ‘It becomes dull only to dull minds.’ If you have the perception and the interest to see it, and the wit to express it, your story is always different from yesterday’s story.”

Those are the baseball-writing basics from one of the greats.

Everything starts with the basics. Pitchers locate the fastball and hitters drive the ball back up the middle. Newspapermen usually lean against the bar and deal with it all tomorrow.

Smith used to share the pages of the old New York World Journal Tribune with Jimmy Cannon.

Cannon was also one of the greats, but is probably best known for his often imitated one-liner columns titled: Nobody Asked Me, But…

I loved the style as a young reporter and used to carry a collection of Cannon’s columns around with me like a crutch. An old newspaper editor encouraged me to swipe the idea.

“You had better learn how to steal if you’re gonna make it in this business,” the editor said. “There are only so many good ideas out there and the smart guys usually get ‘em first.”

Cannon was one of the smart guys so I grabbed his idea and ran. I have pounded out many of these columns in past lives, but now I’m just another old righty taking the mound to see if I’ve got anything left on my fastball.

Nobody asked me either, but…

I hope Jason Giambi gets a good deal to play ball somewhere, but I don’t want it to be in the American League East. I would hate to pull against the Big G.

I’m at every Yankees home game and I watch every road game on television.

I know that’s not normal.

I realize I’m crazy, which means I’m not crazy. I think.

It’s really insane to score every game, but I do it anyway.

I’ve had good ideas: Blogging about baseball.

And bad ideas: Becoming an art student through the mail.

I bleed Yankees blue and will defend my team and everyone on it until my last breath.

I believe Derek Jeter is the most important man in this city.

I also believe Alex Rodriguez will lead this team through October.

And that Mariano Rivera will get the final out of a glorious baseball season.

I know that Jorge Posada is the toughest man in the world.

I have faith that Andy Pettitte and Bobby Abreu will be Yankees on Opening Day.

I believe Robinson Cano is going to have the biggest comeback season of all time.

And that Hideki Matsui will bounce back strong, too.

This will be Joba Chamberlain’s year.

But Chien-Ming Wang will win the American League Cy Young Award.

It’s impossible not to love Johnny Damon.

Phil Hughes is going to pitch a lot of big games in the Bronx.

Humberto Sanchez is already a big star in the Bronx and now everyone else will get a good look at him.

I certainly wish Mike Mussina well, but I have no idea how anyone can walk away from baseball while they can still play.

I like the World Baseball Classic, but I want to love it.

If I could pick one ballplayer – living or dead – to have dinner with it would certainly be Josh Gibson.

I’m proud to be on the staff here at Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter. But I think the blog might get more readers if it was called Derek Jeter’s Bronx Banter.

Pitchers and catchers report in 71 days. I’ll be leaning against the bar until then.

We made it to another Friday, so powered by The Two Ronnies, here’s the news …

• And on the Sabathia, C.C. rested: Tyler Kepner of the Times has an analysis of the dance between the Yanks and Sabathia to this point.  Here’s an excerpt:

Sabathia is a different case entirely, and the reason he is stalling, to those who know him, is just as the (anonymous) general manager suspected: his first choice is not New York. Sabathia is from Vallejo, Calif., near the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is well known that his preference is to play for a team on the West Coast. But the money is elsewhere.

“It’s not that he doesn’t want to be a Yankee; that’s not it at all,” said a friend of Sabathia’s, who was granted anonymity because Sabathia had not authorized him to speak on his behalf. “It’s just the aspect of being out there, his family, that kind of stuff.”

• First-degree Burnett: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the Braves have offered A.J. Burnett a four-year deal (with some reports that there is a vesting fifth year).  The annual salary is reported to be around $15 million.
• Lowe and (the Yankees are looking in from the) outside: Boston Globe’s Tony Massarotti writes that Derek Lowe has received two offers, one being from the Phillies and the other NOT coming from either the BoSox or Bombers.  However, according to a “baseball source”:

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman will visit with Boras today, when he could make a formal offer for Lowe. Red Sox officials similarly could present an offer to Boras later this week, though it is highly questionable as to whether the Sox have any intention of getting into a bidding war for any high-priced pitcher.

• Where can one find a good Baldelli in the Bronx?: The Post’s Joel Sherman writes that the Yanks are one of at least six teams interested in FA Rocco Baldelli.  Sherman opines:

For the Yankees, Baldelli would provide some DH support for Hideki Matsui and perhaps a righty bat to play in left field on occasion to rest Johnny Damon.

• Over at MLB.com, Bryan Hoch sets the table for the Yankees at the upcoming Winter Meetings.  He has some notes on players that could or should be gone from the club by Spring Training, namely Cano, Cabrera, Kennedy, Igawa and either Matsui or Damon.
• Pettitte to the Dodgers update: Ken Davidoff of Newsday reports that Joe Torre and Pettitte have indeed spoken, but:

“I talked to Andy,” Torre said. “His agent had called the Dodgers to find out about interest, and that’s when I called him. I had talked to Andy much earlier, asking him to come to my (Safe at Home) Foundation dinner. He was always married to the Yankees, the excitement playing for the Yankees.

“I called him only because his agent called (Dodgers’ GM) Ned (Colletti). I certainly would’ve kicked myself (if I hadn’t called). He never said no to anything, but just from talking to him, I know the Yankees are his first choice. I wasn’t about to talk him out it, knowing Andy like I do.”

• A-Rod will suit up for the Dominican Republic team in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, as per Gordon Edes of Yahoo!Sports.

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Pete Dexter is a hard guy. Dark. He writes hard–succinct, almost scary-clean prose–and he sure lived hard when he was a columnist in Philadelphia from the mid-Seventies through the mid-Eighties. Later, he became a novelist and wrote screenplays.  His newspaper columns and a few longer magazine pieces were compiled in the fine collection, Paper Trails.

I’ve heard Dexter compared favorably with legendary newspaper columnists Jimmy Breslin and Mike Royko.

Steve Volk wrote an excellent profile of Dexter a few years back that is worth checking out.  In Philly, Dexter was friends with the fighter Randall Tex Cobb.  Cobb and Dexter got into a brawl in a baroom that almost cost Dexter his life:

The night he was beaten near to death is Dexter’s signature biographical moment—the instant in time when his already colorful life story entered the realm of myth.

Dexter, so the story goes, was a hard-drinking Philadelphia newspaperman who met up with a bunch of Grays Ferry toughs. They were upset by a column he’d written about a drug-related death in the neighborhood. They beat him with baseball bats.

Dexter suffered a broken pelvis and enough broken skin to warrant 60 stitches. He recovered from his wounds, and—this is important—stopped drinking. Then he proceeded to become one of America’s best fiction writers.

There are, though, problems with the story.

For one, Dexter himself says the incident doesn’t look so important to him through his 63-year-old eyes—he didn’t hear a redemption song in the sound of his own pelvis cracking. Then there’s the matter of the baseball bats.

For a taste of Dexter’s work, take a look at this beautifully-crafted story he wrote for Sports Illustrated in the mid-Eighties:

Early on the afternoon of Feb. 4, 1982, a truck driver named Albert Brihn, on the way to a sewage-treatment plant off PGA Boulevard just outside Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., noticed something lying in a clearing of pine trees 60 feet off the road connecting the treatment plant to the street. It looked like a dummy.

Mr. Brihn delivered his load and headed back out. On the way, the thing in the clearing caught his eye again. Then something else—a buzzard, floating over it, banking again and again in those grim buzzard circles. Suddenly the thought broke, and Mr. Brihn knew what the thing was.

He stopped the truck and walked to the body. It was a man dressed in a black bikini bathing suit. There was a gold chain around the neck threaded through an Italian horn of plenty. He studied the body—there was a hole to the right of the nose, another at the right temple, both with muzzle burns, and there was a tear between the nose and the mouth where a bullet fragment had passed going out. As he stood there, the chest rose and fell twice. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

A little more than 10 minutes later, the paramedics from Old Dixie Fire Station No. 2 arrived in an ambulance. If you believe the signs you see coming into town, Palm Beach Gardens is the golf capital of the world. It is home to a large retirement community—in this case a financially secure retirement community—so when one of its citizens expires, serious efforts are made toward not leaving the body lying around. Certainly not long enough to attract buzzards.

This particular body, of course, did not belong to someone of retirement age. The paramedics were there in 10 minutes anyway, and took it, the chest still rising and falling, to Palm Beach Gardens Community Hospital, where, at 3:36 p.m., the chest went suddenly still. Michael J. Dalfo was 29 years old, and the coroner’s report would say he died of two .25-caliber bullets, shot at close range into his head.

By Bob Costas

(as told to Alex Belth)

To me Yankee Stadium means the original Yankee Stadium. I know the 1976-through-2008 version saw a lot of great moments and houses a lot of memories but since I’m from a generation prior to that, at least in terms of remembering baseball, my earliest memories are of the classic Yankee Stadium where Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, or for that matter, Bobby Murcer, played on exactly the same field with exactly the same dimensions as Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio. That’s what resonates most for me.

The first game I ever saw in person was the second to last day of the 1959 season. Saturday afternoon. It was one of those rare years in that era when the Yankees did not win the pennant. They finished third that year behind the White Sox and the Indians. I was seven-years-old. My father took me and my cousin.

My father was a huge baseball fan, very knowledgeable. His allegiances ran more towards the National League than the American. But there was that four season window, 1958-61, when the Yankees were the only team in New York. Most members of my family were either Giant fans or Dodger fans. But when I first became conscious of baseball the Yankees were the only New York team so they became my team. The Yankees televised a lot of games, even in that era. Mel Allen and Red Barber were in the booth along with the just-retired Phil Rizzuto. The games were on Channel 11 in black-and-white—I don’t think the Yankees started broadcasting in color until 1966.

Anyway, they were playing the Orioles that day. My cousin, who was older than me, was a Giants fan and loved Willie Mays just as much as I loved Mantle. Since the Giants weren’t involved he insisted on wearing an Orioles cap which infuriated me. I had a Yankee cap and we were seated in the lower left field stands. Not the bleachers but the lower left field stands, not far from the 402 sign that was just on the left field side of the bullpen.

There wasn’t that big of a crowd. My cousin and I had our gloves like kids always did and as the game moved along we moved down closer and closer because we were convinced that a home run or a ground rule double would soon land right in that area. And we weren’t just disappointed we were amazed that none did. The Yankees lost the game 7-2. I remember Johnny Blanchard hitting a home run. Mantle did not play which was an enormous letdown.

We didn’t keep score that day but we bought souvenirs. And I’ll be the one millionth person to testify to this but the thing you were struck by was the colors. Because your orientation to baseball, even if you were a very aware seven-year-old kid, was radio, black and white television and black-and-white pictures in the newspaper. And now you walk in and you’re struck by not just the color but how arresting the colors are. The orange of the warning track, how emerald green the grass was, how pure white the batter’s box and chalk lines and the bases were before the game started, the copper color of the façade. It was such an overwhelming place, the scale of it was enormous, and it was breathtaking, especially for a little kid.

Not to diminish the new Yankee Stadium, because many players and fans feel strongly about it and it had great features like Monument Park, but it wasn’t the old place. Not quite as awe-inspiring. The third baseball game I ever did on network Television was in 1980. I was 28-years-old. The Yankees were playing the Tigers on the last Saturday of the regular season. The Tigers were bad then, but they had beaten the Yankees the night before and that kept the Yankees’ clinching number at one. There were a bunch of other games—one involved the Dodgers and the other was the Phillies and Expos. These were supposed to be the featured games on NBC and the Yankee game was a back-up game in case of rain. And it did rain in Montreal and the game was delayed something like four hours. Eventually, the Phillies won that night, I think Schmidt hit a home run to clinch the division. So this combination of circumstances, a rain-out, the Yankees stalled at one, and suddenly this game went out to the whole country.

And I’m sure nobody outside of St. Louis had any idea who I was. I’m doing the game with Bobby Valentine. The Yankees win the game. Reggie hits a home run into the upper deck, his 41st and it ties Ben Ogilvie for the league lead. Gossage comes in and saves the game and they clinch the division. A memorable first time in the Yankee Stadium booth.

Subsequently, when I became part of the Game of Week team with Tony Kubek, we did many games at the Stadium. One happened to be Old Timers’ Day and Mickey Mantle came into the booth for a few innings. I tried to be as professional as I could, that is when I wasn’t pinching myself. Later, I did a number of playoff and World Series’ games there. But even with the pennant and World Series on the line I never heard the Stadium any louder than it was for Mickey Mantle Day in 1969. Mantle had retired prior to the ‘69 season and this was the final send-off day. They retired his uniform. The place was full which was remarkable because the capacity was huge back then and they didn’t sell out often. DiMaggio and Whitey Ford were part of the ceremony. Mickey’s remarks were simple, humble but in their own way eloquent and moving and there was a sustained 8-10 minute ovation. I don’t remember ever hearing a more appreciative reaction at a ballgame.

Bob Costas is the host of NBC’s Football Night in America and HBO’s Costas Now.

Butch lives way over in Parkchester and only stops by Juan Carlos’s coffee cart when he wants to complain about something.

The regulars usually spot him a block away and most gulp their breakfast and head in the other direction. A stubborn few – Javier from Walton Avenue, Fat Paulie from Gerard Avenue and Jon from Woodycrest Avenue in High Bridge – meet him head on.

“You’re early,” Javier says. “Bitching season doesn’t start for another three months.”

“It’s also nice to see you,” Butch says smugly. “Are you finally ready to admit that Cashman is screwing up this team?”

“No one around here thinks that,” Fat Paulie says. “There’s a lot of work to do this winter, but what makes you think that Cashman isn’t going to get it done?”

“He didn’t even offer arbitration to Abreu,” Butch says. “He should have, at least, set us up to get the draft picks. And why hasn’t he finished a deal with Sabathia and what’s he doing to resign Pettitte and maybe get Teixeira?”

“You don’t know anything about Cashman’s plan,” Jon says. “Why not let him finish rebuilding the team before you start complaining?”

“You guys look at everything through Yankee-colored glasses,” Butch snaps. “Someday you’ll have to admit that I’m right.”

“Why do you waste all this stuff on us?” Javier says with a shrug. “You should do what all the other experts do: Start your own baseball blog.”

“Do you really think I should?” Butch asks.

“Absolutely,” Javier answers.

The others nod, too.

“I’m gonna do it,” Butch says as he turns and heads for home.

“Don’t forget to write,” Fat Paulie says.

“Yeah,” Javier adds. “Make sure and blog it!”

Powered by Love Train – The Sound of Philadelphia, here’s the news:

• Pete Abe will be doing a live video chat event at LoHud today at 1pm.  Click here to access it.
• In case you have nothing to do for about three hours, you can read a 153-page PDF file with all the e-mails that went back and forth between the City and the Yanks regarding the City’s use of a luxury box (big props to PeteAbe for the link).
• Doing the Arbitration Tango: At BP.com, Joe Sheehan takes the Yanks to task for not offering arbitration to Abreu and Pettitte:

… to decline the services of above-average players or draft picks in the event of their departure is a stunning waste of resources. Bobby Abreu projects as a five- or six-win player, Pettitte a bit below that … those wins are valuable because they could be the difference between making the postseason and missing it.

… two days ago, the Yankees had assets in Abreu and Pettitte that could have been considered short-term investments with minimal risk and fairly certain benefit (were they to rejoin the club), or long-term investments with more risk and uncertain benefit, but higher upside (were they to become draft picks). Now, they have nothing. How a team with the cash reserves of the Yankees can make a choice like that is inexplicable …

• Oh Atlanta!: Mark Feinsand of the News reports that the Braves are readying a five-year offer to A.J. Burnett:

Burnett, considered the No.2 starter on the market, was expected to wait for Sabathia to make the first move. But with the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays all apparently hesitant to give Burnett a fifth year, the 31-year-old might jump at Atlanta’s offer before Sabathia makes his decision.

• Feinsand also has a blog entry on why Sabathia isn’t a Yankee yet:

It’s very simple. Sabathia clearly doesn’t have the Yankees listed first on his list, preferring to pitch in the National League and/or in California. He’s waiting to see if the Angels, Dodgers or Giants will get involved before he does anything, but it doesn’t mean he’s decided he won’t wind up in pinstripes.

• Meanwhile, ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark echoes the possibility of Sabathia ending up a Giant:

He loves the Bay Area in particular. He even loves the Warriors — enough that he showed up at a Warriors game in person this week.

And no matter how much the Giants might want to prioritize offense this winter, if the most alluring free agent in the solar system keeps suggesting he wants to play for your team if you can make it worth his while, how can you not think about it? So the Giants keep thinking. And the Giants keep talking. Talking to Sabathia’s agent, Greg Genske. And talking among themselves to determine whether this is a road worth seriously driving.

• Over at MLB.com, Lyle Spencer notes that Angels GM Tony Reagins still places Teixeira at the top of his shopping list:

Regains said “there was nothing to” reports that had the Angels moving past Teixeira and focusing on starter CC Sabathia, adding that the club has “no concerns” about Teixeira’s left knee, which was subjected to arthroscopic surgery in 2007. A published report indicated the Angels were too concerned with the knee long-term to go past six years for Teixeira, triggering a move toward Sabathia.

• Jeter second (base) to none?: Rob Neyer at ESPN.com chimes in on Steven Goldman wondering whether Jeter could play second base at some point in the near future:

… which isn’t to suggest the Yankees should throw a billion dollars at Jeter next winter (or sooner). Because if they’re paying him a ton of money for five years, they’re going to feel like they have to play him regularly for five years, and in four or five years he will not be good enough to play every day. For the Yankees the money isn’t the issue; the issue is the games, the at-bats, the plate appearances. And as Goldman suggests, second base probably isn’t the answer. Even if he can actually play second base, whatever you gain in defense you’re likely to lose in positional scarcity.

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As a kid, my buddy Rich Lederer loved Pete Maravich and Joe Willie Namath.  They were his idols.  In fact, he loved Namath so much he named his first son after him.  There was something exceptional, something extra about both Pistol Pete and Broadway Joe (Mark Kreigel has written biographies of both of them). Come to think of it, Rich worshipped Nolan Ryan too.

So, here’s Maravich at his best:

And here’s Curry Kirkpatrick’s killer 1978 profile of Pistol Pete for Sports Illustrated:

Pistol Pete. For those who measure the passage of time in pop culture images, it may be difficult to realize that Pete Maravich of the flappy hair and the floppy socks and the outrageous shots and passes and turnovers and point totals; he of the childlike abandon and imagination and sheer, fundamental joy in the game; he who made basketball so much fun for so many of us, is 30 years old. And it ain’t no fun anymore.

If Pete Maravich is not the unique athlete of his time, he is close, and certainly he is one of the more misunderstood and controversial. His teammate on the New Orleans Jazz, Rich Kelley, calls him “an American phenomenon, a stepchild of the human imagination.” More simply, Maravich has always seemed to be misplaced: an individualist in a team environment; a perfectionist but not a purist; the white boy in the (now 75%) black man’s game; the people’s choice who feels that the people are against him.

Above everything else, Maravich has been an entertainer, the one-and-only, the star, a man who long ago chose style over substance as the best way to go. Cary Grant was like this and, more recently, Burt Reynolds, who made a few magazine covers himself. In another realm, Edward, Duke of Windsor, made a career out of style. Would the Duke have been able to rule? Can Cary and Burt act? Does anybody care?

The essence—and curse—of Pete Maravich is that he always has known the answers; too often he has shown that he knows. Honestly now, does it matter what team Pete Maravich plays for, or for that matter whether it wins or loses? Just so he performs. Just so he does another gig. Just so Pistol Pete shakes and bakes and makes the others quake. Just so the Pistol does it.

A Bronx Banter Interview

By Hank Waddles

I can pinpoint the exact date when I became a Dallas Cowboys fan. On January 15, 1978, I was a young boy living in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, but without any attachment to the Lions when my Aunt Hazel and Uncle Tommy came over to watch Super Bowl XII between the Cowboys and the Denver Broncos. Uncle Tommy had bet money on the Broncos, so each time the Cowboys scored his face would twist into a painful grimace. Since I was an eight-year-old smart aleck, I thought it was hilarious and soon found myself quite naturally rooting for the Cowboys and against my uncle. When Dallas scored its final points, putting the game out of reach for the Broncos, Uncle Tommy actually slid off the couch in disgust, making me laugh out loud until my mother shushed me. My uncle passed away only a few years later, so that night remains my strongest memory of him. I’ll never know how much money he lost that night, but I gained a team.

Perhaps because I took pleasure in my uncle’s pain, the Cowboys rewarded me with a string of painful losses: to the Steelers a year later in Supe XIII (thank you, Jackie Smith); to Montana and Clark; to Riggins and the Hogs. Soon enough they descended into mediocrity and irrelevance, until Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson came to the rescue and rebuilt the franchise.

Any football fan can tell you what happened next. Jerry and Jimmy turned the team upside down, traded Herschel Walker, drafted Aikman and Emmitt, and started winning Super Bowls. Author Jeff Pearlman starts with what we know and goes deeper, talking to everyone who had anything to do with the team during that era, ranging from the players and coaches to the reporters who covered them to the women who slept with them. The result is Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, a revealing and engaging look at one of the greatest teams in NFL history. Recently Jeff was kind enough to talk with me about the book. Enjoy.

BronxBanter
I’m guessing that this book was kind of a perfect storm – high profile football players that haven’t yet faded from the public consciousness, lots of Super Bowls, lots of sex, and lots of drugs. How long after you started this project did you realize you had hit a goldmine?

Jeff Pearlman
I would say I actually knew even before I started it. I’ll be totally honest with you – I haven’t even said this to anyone. I had a really, really, really good feeling about this book early on. Early on. This was basically my way of thinking. My first book about the ’86 Mets made the Times best seller list for six or seven weeks, and I didn’t expect it to. I had no expectations at all because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, it was my first book, and it made it. My kind of way of thinking with this, the Cowboys were like the Mets on steroids. You’re talking about a team that’s probably the most popular sports franchise in the country, much more famous figures. With the Mets, yeah, you’re talking Gooden and Strawberry, but then Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter are big New York figures, but they’re not national guys. With the Cowboys – Aikman, Deion, Emmitt, Irvin, Switzer, Jerry, Jimmy… it was pretty bountiful.

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